Shadow of the Tomb Raider is officially coming to Linux in 2019

Liam, now that the game was officially announced, considering that Proton sales counts as Linux sales and Feral has the publishing rights for Linux, please, ask Feral if right new they are getting a cut of protonic sales.

The fact that they don't care about linuxians playing their announced ports right now via Proton, suggest me that, indeed, they get a cut of Proton sales.

I agree, it would be nice to get a bit more clarification. Although I'd have to imagine even if they get paid, steamplay sales still make the case to the publisher that perhaps the port might not have been necessary?

Seems like getting games to run well on linux has become so much easier in recent years. But now the politics of when you buy, who you buy from, and the underlying technology your supporting has become much more complicated :D

I'll always take a native port over Steam Play/Proton and I don't mind paying a bit more or waiting a bit for it, though, obviously, day 1 is the ideal. That said, I still think Proton is a wonderful project and I comment Valve and everyone involved with it for pushing it. Yes, there are going to be some... casualties, for lack of a better term, along the way. Titles that would probably have wound up with native ports that don't get native ports because it's easier and cheaper just to make it work with Proton. That's going to happen, but overall I still think Proton is a MASSIVE positive for Linux gaming. The amount of titles that are rapidly becoming seamlessly 1-click playable on Linux because of Proton is awesome.

Yes another useless port that we can play on Proton cause even the creator of DXVK is optimizing it on almost every dxvk update he does
i rather a fighting games like tekken or dragon ball fighterz or even soul calibur 6
mmorpg like world of warcraft, Destiny 2, if blizzard allows them the chance
you know something with long valuse even pugb, fortnite hey FIFA 19

First things first, silencing error messages and implementing exceptions that otherwise don't impact performance/playability at all can by no means be considered game-specific optimizations.

Then you're on suggesting ports from a selection of games with some of them either being officially whitelisted SteamPlay titles or completely playable under Proton, yet you simply won't fathom how Feral chooses to port the third installment of a well-liked previously ported ip from a publisher they've worked with before, just cause it already works fairly decently under Proton.
This is simply ridiculous just by itself.

While Fortnite, PUBG and games from Blizzard/Bethesda/EA is the sort of boost we need for linux gaming to take off (regardless of how I personally feel about some of them), you have to bear in mind that in order for Feral to actually port a game, the original publisher has to be willing to let them port it (and maybe even publish it, I'm unaware of any feral ports not published directly by them, though they might obviously make an exception for huge titles like these).
Getting a linux build to run is one thing. Providing support for it is another and that's where most of the trouble regarding big publishers refusing to support us derives from.
Blizzard is not going to release a crappy build of their games, let alone let somebody else do it, and risk staining their entire image across platforms and they most certainly won't release anything if support/maintenance costs outweigh any insignificant gains they might otherwise have had from linux customers.
Besides, you're already playing their game on your mobile, Wine or Windows partition, so why should they bother?

I too think it's somewhat of a wasted effort and resources to some extent, however I'm still getting the game after the native release just so as to support them.
Of course they can't base their entire market strategy around tryhards choosing to support them, but for all we know they could have already had a signed contract with Square Enix for this way before DXVK's latest releases were a thing.

I play fighting games mmorpg and sports games i know its not all about what i want, and its not about what you want, its what we all want and they should Hold port votes
Cause if i see another warhammer port from FERAL im gonna go crazy

As much as I regret seeing all of their almost identical monthly TW and racing port releases, I'm fairly sure the people over Feral have a greater grasp regarding what sort of port is going to be profitable (or even plaussible due to original publishers) for them than you and I have.
I also despise Fighting and Sports games, though I wouldn't cringe as much at such a port announcement merely cause we don't get another one of these every second month or so.

I might actually get this. I was not a fan of the reboot nor Rise of the Tomb Raider, mainly because they were 90% murder simulator and 10% actual raiding of tombs, and I would much rather the ratio was reversed. However, I have heard that while Lara still goes on a ridiculous murdering spree in this game, at least there is a lot more exploration and tomb raiding, which is my jam.

Now port HITMAN 2 (actual murder simulator), please. Pretty please.

Made me laugh

Ironically, the whole point of HITMAN is to kill as few people as possible. While you can achieve your objective in any way you see fit, in order to get a silent assassin rating and the highest score possible, you have to kill the target(s) and ONLY the target(s). The game actively punishes you for killing anyone else. So while HITMAN is absolutely a game about murdering people, I mean, you play an assassin, it's a game where the best score is attainable by killing as few people as possible.

Compare that to Tomb Raider 2013 where Lara murders roughly 500 Russians. She then comes back and kills another 500 Russians in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara must really hate Russians. Her bloodlust for Russian blood is insatiable. :O

Lara is a far more prolific, albeit less stylish, killer than Agent 47, and she's supposed to be an archeologist.

Well each to their own I suppose. Myself I just love our new Valkyrie-esque Lara Croft. One of the most satisfying moments in gaming 2016 for me was halfway through the first game when Lara starts to really fight back and you could here the bad guys scream in terror "she's got a rocket launcher". Haven't had a moment like that since :(

I think I've just died and gone to heaven! I've just a couple of months ago dumped windows for linux mint, and so far I have no regrets. I love it. Wish I knew how to set up nvidia drivers correctly though (sorted mine by accident and don't know how..)

My only issue is gaming. I love the tomb raider games, and complete every one and today's news is bliss. I really thought I'd have to turn traitor and install Windows to play shadow of the tomb raider but feral games to the rescue.

I really hope this is the start of more new games going to Linux, steam made a good start, Gog too and I've just found part on Linux, but hopefully more to follow.

I can't wait to part with my hard earned cash to someone who supports Linux gaming, and I know I won't be dissapointed.

Thanks guys, looking forward to it release...

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Long live Linux!

waste of a port
Proton already works fine with this

This is how I see it;
A game that has a Linux version I would consider buying.
A game without Linux version I would not consider buying.
I don't want neither Wine, Proton or anything else of that sort in my Linux computer.

If a game company want my money they will have to make a Linux version of their game.

I think the right way to go is to encourage game companies to add Linux to their supported plattforms, and today, with modern frameworks in place, it isn't that much of a problem to build a game for multiple plattforms.

So theirs a game you really like Only on Windows thats works pretty well on proton you would not consider buying it
the reason i believe in porton over feral rpg and adventure ports, i will be able to take almost my entire collection over to linux, instead of praying a dev will port it to linux.
Why would i leave windows to play games i dont like i hate windows and i wont leave it to play nothing, most of you guys here enjoy those games Feral Port but a lot of us dont
And if Proton kicks off to a bright start their will be More Vulkan Ports and then A lot more native Ports
and if proton gets to the point of every game running at 90% to 100% performance of Windows i would take that with open Arms over Native.

I might actually get this. I was not a fan of the reboot nor Rise of the Tomb Raider, mainly because they were 90% murder simulator and 10% actual raiding of tombs, and I would much rather the ratio was reversed. However, I have heard that while Lara still goes on a ridiculous murdering spree in this game, at least there is a lot more exploration and tomb raiding, which is my jam.

Now port HITMAN 2 (actual murder simulator), please. Pretty please.

Made me laugh

Ironically, the whole point of HITMAN is to kill as few people as possible. While you can achieve your objective in any way you see fit, in order to get a silent assassin rating and the highest score possible, you have to kill the target(s) and ONLY the target(s). The game actively punishes you for killing anyone else. So while HITMAN is absolutely a game about murdering people, I mean, you play an assassin, it's a game where the best score is attainable by killing as few people as possible.

Compare that to Tomb Raider 2013 where Lara murders roughly 500 Russians. She then comes back and kills another 500 Russians in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara must really hate Russians. Her bloodlust for Russian blood is insatiable. :O

Lara is a far more prolific, albeit less stylish, killer than Agent 47, and she's supposed to be an archeologist.

Well each to their own I suppose. Myself I just love our new Valkyrie-esque Lara Croft. One of the most satisfying moments in gaming 2016 for me was halfway through the first game when Lara starts to really fight back and you could here the bad guys scream in terror "she's got a rocket launcher". Haven't had a moment like that since :(

I grew up on the original Tomb Raider games. The vast majority of the first game was exploration and puzzle platforming with a some fights here and there, but they were few and far between. I loved the puzzle platforming and the cinematic escape sequences they added in later titles where Lara tried to evade traps or crumbling ruins, but whenever combat came up I was always like "let's just get this crap over with so that I can get back to the fun exploration and puzzle solving". Of course, it didn't help that the combat in the original games was garbage. Over time, combat became a bigger and bigger part of the series, so when they rebooted the series in 2013 I was hoping they would go back to the roots and make it mostly about exploring and puzzle platforming again rather than having so much janky combat and crappy QTEs. Instead, they went the other way and made the game overwhelmingly mostly combat and QTEs with some exploration and very little puzzle platforming. Granted, the combat in the reboots is MUCH better, but that's not what I was looking for and it was a bitter disappointment. It didn't help that the few optional tomb puzzles in the 2013 reboot were insultingly easy and could be solved in about 45 seconds each.

I recognize that the reboot games are well made games, they're just not what I was looking for from the series. Shadow seems to be the closest the reboots have come to being like the old games.

A thought occurs.
Since they are developing a MacOS version too (crazy! right?), there should be a reasonable financial incentive for it. If they don't make any money, why do it? Good Samaritans are like unicorns and we all know it. :S:

Are MacOS sales really worth anything? Are they worth MORE than the Linux sales? :S:
I mean even Apple seems to consider gaming in MacOS to be like 'eh, whatevs'. Maybe there could be close to zero effort to bang out a MacOS version once the Linux port is done? I really don't think so, but I have no real insight here.

Quite interesting if we could hear what Feral has to say about this.

I recognize that the reboot games are well made games, they're just not what I was looking for from the series. Shadow seems to be the closest the reboots have come to being like the old games.

Though old enough (by far), I had the advantage of never having playing any Tomb Raider before. On its own, the reboot was quite a good game.

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Go to their Unix drivers page. Pick a version, download it and run the file. That's about it as far as I remember :)
Edit: And reboot, of course.
Edit2: I was wrong, disregard this :)


Last edited by Salvatos on 20 November 2018 at 8:30 pm UTC

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Go to their Unix drivers page. Pick a version, download it and run the file. That's about it as far as I remember :)

Why would you install manually on Mint when you can use a PPA and forget about manual updates for the rest of time?

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Go to their Unix drivers page. Pick a version, download it and run the file. That's about it as far as I remember :)

Why would you install manually on Mint when you can use a PPA and forget about manual updates for the rest of time?

I don't know, I haven't used a PPA in a long while and the driver manager really doesn't seem to do much or say anything.

So theirs a game you really like Only on Windows thats works pretty well on proton you would not consider buying it
the reason i believe in porton over feral rpg and adventure ports, i will be able to take almost my entire collection over to linux, instead of praying a dev will port it to linux.
Why would i leave windows to play games i dont like i hate windows and i wont leave it to play nothing, most of you guys here enjoy those games Feral Port but a lot of us dont
And if Proton kicks off to a bright start their will be More Vulkan Ports and then A lot more native Ports
and if proton gets to the point of every game running at 90% to 100% performance of Windows i would take that with open Arms over Native.

There is already a wide range of high quality game titles available on Linux right now, so if you still cannot find anything interesting then maybe Windows is a better alternative for you. To switch to Linux and then to complain about the games you cannot play because of this isn't much use to anyone, especially not yourself. I don't complain about people playing games on Windows, and it does not bother me. I did it myself up to the point where Windows 10 became an issue and it was ok.

It is of course good that old titles can be made available for Linux via windows emulators like Proton and Wine, but for new games there is really no reason to stick to Windows only.

Finally I cannot understand why you complain about Feral porting a game to Linux? What does that have to do with you playing windows games using the Proton emulator? It looks to me as if you imply that just because you like to use Proton everybody else should also like it?
Well, I don't, so for me a linux version of whatever game is a positive thing, and in my opition I owe it to Feral that I can play many of the best games out there without any emulator at all. I have 30+ titles that I like on Linux already and it can last me a life time, but I fully expect there to be more in the future.


Last edited by Bard on 20 November 2018 at 8:09 pm UTC

I hope that Feral Interactive, could make this game to not have any background music at all, when you switch it off in the settings? I bought this game through Proton, which acts as a Linux buy, or so I am believed to understand. Whenever I live streamed it, I kept getting copyright from YouTube, even though I had switched off the music in the options, there is still background music, when Lara and Jona are following matey through the bar, the live band on stage, their music still coming through and much later in the game at the first town Jona and Lara get to, in the bar the jukebox is playing. Then much, much later in the game in a jeep the stereo is playing the same music from the bar on the jukebox, from the first town Jona and Lara visit. Now I know Brian D'Oliveira, who done the Mexican soundtracks and so blooming good they are too, especially La Bruga, which is so damn addictive, that you end up singing it in your head and yes I have been known to sing it out loud, whilst walking through town, above my snoring when I'm awake, yes got to that stage in my life, when I'm snoring when I'm completely awake, walking down the street.

Anyway usually when you switch off music in a game, it's off no other music should be heard and to be honest it isn't fair on game streamers whom don't want copyright infringements on their channels. So please Feral when you port this game, could you please make it, so that all the music is switched off, when it is switched off in the options? Looking forward to the port, as fed up having to play this in Winders 10. Getting a new build soon, AsRock B450m Pro4, Ryzen 5 2400g, 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 (Obviously) Ram, the disappointing part though to my mind is still a brilliant card, the 1050ti, 500GB WD Blue SSD 2.5 might in the future invest in M.2 cards as this board has two slots. A 1TB SSD hybrid drive, 2.5. This is a Xmas present to myself, as then I'll be able to move fully to Linux for gaming, as it's only this game and of course Capcom's Resident Evil series, that I would like to see on Linux, but I can dream, that's stopping me from using Linux full time. But with new build I should be able to get it going in Proton, so I will follow up with another novel of this stature, once my new build's parts are here and I've built it. Loving this gamingonlinux channel by the way, thank you Liam for making such great content.

62 comments. Don't tell me that there isn't interest in native ports anymore with Steam Play available. :)

I think I've just died and gone to heaven! I've just a couple of months ago dumped windows for linux mint, and so far I have no regrets. I love it. Wish I knew how to set up nvidia drivers correctly though (sorted mine by accident and don't know how..)

My only issue is gaming. I love the tomb raider games, and complete every one and today's news is bliss. I really thought I'd have to turn traitor and install Windows to play shadow of the tomb raider but feral games to the rescue.

I really hope this is the start of more new games going to Linux, steam made a good start, Gog too and I've just found part on Linux, but hopefully more to follow.

I can't wait to part with my hard earned cash to someone who supports Linux gaming, and I know I won't be dissapointed.

Thanks guys, looking forward to it release...

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Long live Linux!

Message me and I can help you with the nvidia driver.

NOTE: Is it possible for someone to create an easy install nvidia drivers package for linux vergins like me? Just a thought.. If not, anyone have an idiots guide (and I mean complete idiot) to installing nvidia drivers on mint 19?

Go to their Unix drivers page. Pick a version, download it and run the file. That's about it as far as I remember :)
Edit: And reboot, of course.

Um, no you can't just run the file. You have to drop to terminal and shut off display manager. It's not that hard though. On mint I only need to control-alt-f1, then cd to the directory where the .run file is stored. Type in "sudo service lightdm stop" then "sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-*". Then choose the prompts that are already highlighted. Really though unless you just like installing and testing the very latest drivers (like me) then you don't need to do anything special with mint. Either just use driver manager or add the ppa from https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa , that page tells you how to add it.

Hm. I thought they had made it achievable through the GUI in recent years. Must have been something else. Maybe LAMP.

I might actually get this. I was not a fan of the reboot nor Rise of the Tomb Raider, mainly because they were 90% murder simulator and 10% actual raiding of tombs, and I would much rather the ratio was reversed. However, I have heard that while Lara still goes on a ridiculous murdering spree in this game, at least there is a lot more exploration and tomb raiding, which is my jam.

Now port HITMAN 2 (actual murder simulator), please. Pretty please.

Made me laugh

Ironically, the whole point of HITMAN is to kill as few people as possible. While you can achieve your objective in any way you see fit, in order to get a silent assassin rating and the highest score possible, you have to kill the target(s) and ONLY the target(s). The game actively punishes you for killing anyone else. So while HITMAN is absolutely a game about murdering people, I mean, you play an assassin, it's a game where the best score is attainable by killing as few people as possible.

Compare that to Tomb Raider 2013 where Lara murders roughly 500 Russians. She then comes back and kills another 500 Russians in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara must really hate Russians. Her bloodlust for Russian blood is insatiable. :O

Lara is a far more prolific, albeit less stylish, killer than Agent 47, and she's supposed to be an archeologist.

Well each to their own I suppose. Myself I just love our new Valkyrie-esque Lara Croft. One of the most satisfying moments in gaming 2016 for me was halfway through the first game when Lara starts to really fight back and you could here the bad guys scream in terror "she's got a rocket launcher". Haven't had a moment like that since :(

I grew up on the original Tomb Raider games. The vast majority of the first game was exploration and puzzle platforming with a some fights here and there, but they were few and far between. I loved the puzzle platforming and the cinematic escape sequences they added in later titles where Lara tried to evade traps or crumbling ruins, but whenever combat came up I was always like "let's just get this crap over with so that I can get back to the fun exploration and puzzle solving". Of course, it didn't help that the combat in the original games was garbage. Over time, combat became a bigger and bigger part of the series, so when they rebooted the series in 2013 I was hoping they would go back to the roots and make it mostly about exploring and puzzle platforming again rather than having so much janky combat and crappy QTEs. Instead, they went the other way and made the game overwhelmingly mostly combat and QTEs with some exploration and very little puzzle platforming. Granted, the combat in the reboots is MUCH better, but that's not what I was looking for and it was a bitter disappointment. It didn't help that the few optional tomb puzzles in the 2013 reboot were insultingly easy and could be solved in about 45 seconds each.

I recognize that the reboot games are well made games, they're just not what I was looking for from the series. Shadow seems to be the closest the reboots have come to being like the old games.

Yeah that is where the each to their own comes to play :). Myself I found the original PS game somewhat boring, was far more into RE and say Dino Crisis. That said I too hope that we will get bigger and more puzzling tombs in the next game.

I can't wait, but I can, because I've already waited for so long - and I'm sure a couple of extra months is worth the wait. Go Feral. Will buy this for me and my brother provided it works well on Vega 64 and Fury X, which I am sure of.

Wonder if Feral will make use of stream-output / transform feedback on Vulkan?

@liamdawe: was there any mention of RTX / raytracing support? I might have a reason to upgrade if that's the case :)